Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

He hasn’t washed his gray suit for a long while. His caterpillar-like mustache has been preserved and sustained over the last several months. He’s traveled the talk show and late night circuits, attempting to shave off Conan O’Brien’s pubic hair in the process. His accent is an uneasy melding of Hebrew and Jibberish, although he claims to be a journalist from his native country of Kazakhstan. He’s profane, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. He’s also one of the most ingenious comic creations ever brought to the silver screen. His name is Borat Sagdiyev, and is played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in a performance that has to be seen to be believed. Considering the media exposure he’s gotten lately, however, most of America has undoubtedly seen him already.

Borat was one of three characters Cohen embodied on Da Ali G Show. This new film, directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry Charles, more or less follows the reality-bending structure of Cohen’s previous work. The actor completely disappears within the warped reality of his character, and ventures into an unsuspecting society, where he has bizarre encounters with its citizens. Although the film’s script by Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, and Dan Mazer allows for certain scenes to be staged, the remarkable majority of Borat features real interactions with ordinary people oblivious to their participation in the film’s comic stunt. What’s most remarkable is the prejudice Cohen’s naïve persona elicits from its American victims.

As a Kazakhstani journalist sent to the United States by his government to make a “movie-film”, Borat interviews various Americans, many of whom have never heard of Kazakhstan, let alone know that it’s the ninth-largest country in the world. His victims include a gun salesman, who casually recommends the best rifle to kill Jews with, a group of pro-slavery “fraternity brothers”, a U.S. congressman who preaches to his Pentecostal congregation that America is a purely “Christian nation”, and a rodeo cowboy who instructs Borat on how to look “less Muslim” in order to be accepted, while professing his goal to wipe out all homosexuals. Even Alan Keyes – the 2004 senatorial candidate who disowned his lesbian daughter – shows up, looking immensely uncomfortable as Borat chats with him about an ‘accidental’ homosexual experience of his own.

It’s in these conversations that Borat emerges as something more than an adolescent prank-fest. Cohen has constructed his entirely fictional creation as an amalgam of every ‘foreigner’ stereotype created by American ignorance. If Cohen’s victims knew anything about Kazakhstan, or cultures other than their own, they wouldn’t buy his act for an instant. Borat thus becomes a brilliant device to expose the American prejudices and ignorance that often hide under a surface of politically-correct politeness. The character’s unapologetically vulgar personality, which involves insulting people to their face, and labeling the world according to his wild narrow-mindedness, exorcizes out of his victims a similarly horrifying tunnel-vision fueled by intolerance and cultural barriers.

At its best, Borat is blisteringly provocative and hysterically painful satire. There are moments of spontaneous improvisation by Cohen, notably in a scene involving real humor coach Pat Haggerty, that somehow achieve an exquisite comic timing reminiscent of Abbot and Costello. In perhaps the film’s most awe-inspiring sequence, Borat gets an entire rodeo audience to cheer him on as he praises their ‘war of terror’. Yet at a running time of only eighty-four minutes, it’s a little surprising just how much Borat drags in places, and how often it succumbs to aimless silliness. This is most apparent during a prolonged nude wrestling match between Borat and his partner Azamat Bagatov – Ken Davitian – that proves to be more cringe-inducing than anything on display in Shortbus.

Yet the good aspects of Borat are so good that I’m willing to forgive its imperfections. Cohen’s fearless devotion toward embodying his character recalls the ambiguous performance art of Andy Kaufman, while his uproarious muckraking abilities in public mirror the less subtle skills of Michael Moore. Cohen even borrows the ‘plot structure’ of Moore’s Roger & Me, by making Borat’s cinematic journey a seemingly impossible search for an individual, in this case his dream girl, Pamela Anderson. The early screening I attended of Borat on opening day had a sold-out audience that was practically rolling in the aisles with laughter. When the movie ended, however, the crowd left in a deadening silence. Were they paralyzed with shock? Awe? Disgust at the inexplicable nudity? Or were they merely disquieted by what had just been revealed to them? Borat holds a mirror up to our national shortcomings, and the resulting image is not a pretty sight.

Rating: **** (out of *****)